The University of West Florida has students returning for the fall semester on Thursday, Aug. 15. UWF president Dr. Martha Saunders discusses her team’s enrollment strategy and how they plan to handle the growth. The fall enrollment may surpass 15,000.
The university focuses on welcoming students and helping them once they arrive on campus.
“If a student makes, let’s say less than a B in a certain course, they’re going to have trouble finishing in that major, and we can get to them earlier and help them with tutoring or other advice,” Dr. Saunders said. “We have increased our student engagement and support. Students have a lot of needs. They need good advising. They don’t need to be lingering around college for six or seven years. They need to be moving on and getting into the next stage of their lives. But they need advising. They need tutoring; they sometimes need mental health counseling. There’s a lot of change going on. I think we’ve added that. But I think what matters or what’s working is that we are never standing still.”
UWF has had a 22:1 student-teacher ratio. Dr. Saunders says it has been challenging to maintain it. “My provost is working hard. We’re hiring, I think we’ve added probably another 50 faculty, and he is hiring as fast as he can to keep that student-teacher ratio down low.”
She said, “It’s a good problem to have, but at the end of the day, quality matters. And we think that our students, first of all, are taught by ranked faculty, and we compete with the rest of the country for the best. And so we’re always out there trying to find the right fit, someone that meets the needs of our students.”
Dr. Saunders added, “It’s constant. We never slow down, but it’s kind of fun.”
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